Jurors easily rejected claims that Cardi B cut a security guard’s face with her nails during an altercation at a Los Angeles doctor’s office in 2018, granting a total win to the rap superstar following a weeklong civil trial.
The jury deliberated for under an hour on Tuesday (Sept. 2) before unanimously determining that former security guard Emani Ellis did not prove assault, battery, infliction of emotional distress and negligence claims against Cardi (Belcalis Almánzar). The rapper smiled and looked visibly relieved when the verdict was read, clasping her hands and making the sign of the cross.
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Speaking to press outside the courthouse following the verdict, Cardi reiterated that she “did not touch that woman” and is “super, completely innocent” of Ellis’ claims. The rapper also had a warning for those who think litigation is an easy way to win settlement money from celebrities.
“This time around, I’m gonna be nice, but the next person that try to do a frivolous lawsuit against me — I’m going to countersue, and I’m gonna make you pay because this is not okay,” Cardi said. “I work hard for my money for my kids and for people I take care of, so don’t you ever think that you gonna sue me, and I’m just gonna settle and just give you my money. It’s not gonna happen.”
Ellis’ lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment on the verdict.
The trial stemmed from Cardi’s visit to a gynecologist’s office in Beverly Hills back in 2018, when she was four months pregnant with her first child. Ellis said she crossed paths with Cardi outside an elevator and that the rapper cursed, spat and scratched at her cheek with a sharp, three-inch-long acrylic nail.
Ellis claimed this scratch was so bad that she needed plastic surgery to repair the scar and that she suffered immense emotional trauma from the incident. She wanted Cardi to repay $32,500 in medical bills, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional damages for pain and suffering.
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“You have the power to make this wrong right and close the chapter for Ms. Ellis so she can move on with her life,” Ellis’ attorney, Ron Rosen Janfaza, told jurors during his closing argument on Tuesday morning.
Cardi, meanwhile, said she never touched Ellis. During a viral two-day stint on the witness stand, the rapper testified that she and Ellis had a verbal-only altercation after she realized that the guard was recording her — a major concern, Cardi said, because she was still concealing her pregnancy from the public at the time.
The rapper said Ellis is the one who got aggressive during this encounter, backing her into a corner and refusing to leave her alone. Cardi also said her nails weren’t capable of cutting anyone, and the jury saw a photo of her at the NBA All-Star Game the week of this incident, sporting square nails that she described as less than an inch long.
“This is not a difficult case. It is not a close case,” Cardi’s attorney, Peter Anderson, said in his own closing argument on Tuesday. “Cardi did not do anything wrong except try to protect her baby and get to a doctor.”
This was not the rap superstar’s first time in a courtroom. She won a nearly $4 million defamation judgment against gossip blogger Tasha K in 2022 for spreading outlandish falsehoods about drug use, STDs and prostitution. She prevailed in another trial the same year, defeating claims that she harmed a California man by photoshopping his back tattoo onto her raunchy Gangsta Bitch Music Vol. 1 cover.
